


Summer Love

by rasputinian



Category: LISA (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dry Humping, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, armstrong manpain, four times brad almost said i love you and one time he dry humped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 03:34:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17378795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rasputinian/pseuds/rasputinian
Summary: or, four times Brad almost said “I love you” and one time he did.





	Summer Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [irlsupervillain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irlsupervillain/gifts).



> Another commission for irlsupervillain! I promise people keep paying me to write this porn, and i'm not just horny. thank you for commissioning me, and thank you hannah for editing my garbage yet again!
> 
> i like this one. there are still a couple spots i might edit later, but i feel like this is what i was going for when i originally tried to write modes of communication. dont read modes of communication bc im ashamed of it. i did a bad job on that porn.
> 
> Want me to write something for you? Even something that isn't LISA? I'll do it for money! contact me at rasputinovitch.writes@gmail.com

When Brad wakes up for that first summer morning in the borrowed tent, the heat is almost too much to bear. It’s just a little pup tent, too small to fit two grown men, and the night before had been all shifting and sorrys, the length of Terry’s body trying to accommodate the width of Brad’s. Now, though, everything is quiet. They rest face to face, and Brad’s not yet awake enough to find a reason to object to that. Their legs are tangled together, a sheen of sweat easing the little movements between them, the smell of living human bodies musky in the air.

Brad peeks out into the morning, the bright sun mercifully dulled by green nylon. Terry sleeps curled on his side. His arms shield his face loosely, the dark hair of his forearms plastered to his skin. His hair is tied back, and sweat collects along his eyebrows, his eyelashes, the stubble of his upper lip, highlighting the bruises from the impact of the truck, the lines of scab where gravel embedded itself into his face. He’s still wearing his shirt, something Brad cannot boast, and his hairy stomach peeks out from beneath the hem. Brad can see the outline of an erection pressed against his leg, but he tries not to think about it. It’s the morning. He shifts to lie on his back, rests his hand on his bare stomach.

“Don’t,” Terry says softly, but he renegotiates his position against him. He doesn’t even open his eyes. He rests his head against the fat of Brad’s arm, nuzzles his way into comfort, and something seizes in Brad’s chest, that humid summer feel. It’s too warm. Brad wants to retreat, but he doesn’t. He lets the feeling seep in to him like he would any more familiar terror. It presses down on his chest, just enough so that it’s uncomfortable to breathe.

Overhead, the mountains of Olathe loom like vultures.

 

Brad doesn’t know how long he’s been here, knelt over Terry, gripping his side. He just knows everything is too hot: the summer air, the skin on his ears and his cheeks, Terry’s blood on his hands. He’s bleeding out. Brad and the guys have been holding whatever cloth they have, shirts and ponchos and scraps of scavenged rag, to the wound in his side, and it all comes back red.

Terry’s pulse is butterfly-light. Brad checks it, checks it again. He doesn’t know if this is good or bad. Brad doesn’t know how to fix this. He knows death by touch, by feeling a man fight for air beneath his grip, by watching the way a man’s intestines squirm when they spill out from his open gut. Brad can feel the wound beneath the fabric. He can put his finger in the place where his body gives way and opens.

“Switch out,” Queen Roger says, his hand taking Brad’s spot at Terry’s side, holding him down and together. Brad jolts, but he doesn’t let go of Terry.

“What?” he asks. He doesn’t like how his voice sounds. Queen’s face is tired and serious, but he’s holding it in. Brad knows that he isn’t. Maybe that scares him just as much.

“Switch out. You need a break,” he says.

“No, I don’t.” And Brad doesn’t because he has seen someone die before, and he doesn’t break down anymore. One of his best friends died just a week ago, and he was fine. He didn’t let it get in his way. He is going to be fine if Terry dies, and he is trying his hardest to believe that.

“Don’t bullshit me,” Queen says like he _means_ something, and Brad could punch him if his he was only able to pull his hand from Terry.

“I’m not,” he says. Queen swallows, is about to say something else, but something moves. It’s Terry. His arm gropes up toward the gash in his side, jerky and uncoordinated.

“Hey,” Queen says, gently bringing Terry’s arm back in place.

“Hey,” Brad echoes, and even he can hear the fear in his voice.  Terry’s eyes peer open. He winks. Brad has to swallow hard to keep himself from crying.

“I thought you were gone,” Brad says later when they’re lying in the grass, trying to sleep. They’re far enough apart that Brad cannot feel him, and Brad finds himself in terror even though he knows the situation doesn’t call for it.

“You know I wouldn’t do that, dude,” Terry says, so tenderly, and Brad wants to kiss him, but he’s so tired. He lets his head loll to the side and hopes to catch Terry’s gaze. He’s lucky. He’s already looking at him, smiling. Brad feels hot and wet like an open wound.

“I know.”

 

 

Fear has become Brad’s default state. It’s a healthy fear, he reckons, the kind that keeps you alive, but it makes moments like this strange to the touch. The chill of the cave in contrast with the warmth of Terry’s body beside him, the broad corona of a fire somewhere inside. The voices of other men, far away and not concerning him. The smell of fermenting yeast wafting from the kegs of homebrewed beer. He could almost get used to it, but he doesn’t let himself. They’re alone, Brad notices. Queen is at the bar, and Bo is somewhere further down the tunnel. Brad can hear him playing, a soft, discordant pluck. Terry notices it too. He looks at him, smiles in a familiar way that makes his stomach turn.

They don’t have to talk about it anymore. Terry tries to, of course, offers with decreasing frequency and increasing desperation. But they know each other well enough to know what they want.

The kiss is rough and perfunctory, more a statement of _yes, this is happening_ than anything else. Their teeth click together as their bodies negotiate positions and weight. Brad’s tongue only retreats from Terry’s mouth to whisper “not right now,” as Terry’s hand slips beneath the fabric of his pants. Terry pulls back, looks him in the eye with an expression like he doesn’t know what he’s done wrong, like he’s afraid of what happens next.

Brad turns him around, eases him down so that he’s lying on his stomach across a metal keg. It’ll have to do. Terry laughs out of surprise.

“Hell yeah, dude,” Terry says.

“You like that?” Brad asks. Terry doesn’t answer, just grins, and they’re kissing again. Brad savors the moment, Terry’s lips and his tongue, the taste of mouth and cigarette ash. He holds his hip with one hand, lines himself up, and ruts up against him. The hard contact is too much, not enough. Terry makes a sound into his mouth that isn’t quite a moan, and he slips his hand lower so he can touch himself.

“Please fuck me,” Terry begs, and he sounds like he’s on the verge of tears.

“Not now,” Brad says into his ear.

“Brad,” Terry whines, and Brad’s hand clamps over his mouth before he can get too loud. He lets his fingers slip into Terry’s mouth where they rest heavily on his tongue. They’ve done this enough times for him to know Terry likes that. There are other things they’ve only done once or twice, other things they haven’t done but have talked about or around, other things Brad hasn’t brought up but wants with a fervor that surprises him as much as it fills him with shame.

Any shame, for now, is gone, replaced with the friction between their clothed skin, the gasps Brad sucks between his teeth when Terry grinds his hips back. He lets his mind wander to a familiar fantasy where he and Terry are in a bed or on a couch, and they’re face to face. Terry’s on top of him with his mouth on his neck, and Brad doesn’t have to think about whether or not he wants this. He doesn’t let himself stay there too long though. The thought’s too good. It’s too much.

The rest happens in panic, like it always does. Brad pushes his pants down, rucks up Terry’s shirt just in time to come a thick stripe across his back. Terry doesn’t take long after. Brad tries to reach down and help him, but Terry pushes his hand away. He makes a sound in his throat when he comes like he’s in pain.

Brad rests his head on Terry’s back, just above his shoulder blades, and breathes heavily through his nose. Terry laughs again. His hand snakes upward to hold Brad’s. Brad jolts. Terry’s hands are cold.

“Why won’t you fuck me?” Terry asks softly.

“What if we get caught?” Brad answers, but it doesn’t feel like the entire truth. Terry feels it too. He doesn’t say anything for a long while, just tenses and untenses his fingers around Brad’s hand. The afterglow is gone, and in its place is something unsaid, something the both of them are not sure how to approach. Brad is afraid of what happens here, but he just grips Terry’s hand more tightly.

“You like me, right?” Terry asks, and it should be a silly question, but Brad knows it’s not.

“I do like you,” Brad answers. That shouldn’t be the end of it, but it is. There’s more there, but all Brad can do is give Terry’s hand a little squeeze.

“Will you clean me up?”

“Yeah.” Brad reaches into his pack and digs until he finds a rag. It’s dirty, blood and dust and remnant of other times they’ve done this, but it’ll have to do.

“I like this shirt too much to get it all cummy.” Brad curls his lip and wipes the come from Terry’s back.

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true,” Terry chuckles. Brad manages a smile. The two drift their way to the floor, slouched against the kegs and each other. Somewhere in the distance, Bo plucks a sad little tune, and, just for the moment, they are safe. Brad even lets himself close his eyes.

 

 

On the night that the boat is finished, Brad doesn’t sleep. It might be nerves. It might be the pressure that has been building at the front of his skull since the last time he had taken Joy. He’s not high anymore, something his body keeps reminding him with a roiling gut and an ache that engulfs every muscle in his body, but it makes it hard to think, forces him into an animal consciousness. There is only the moment. He doesn’t think about what the next move might be. He doesn’t think about the bloodwood tree, the last of its kind, split like an open throat. He makes a point not to think of that. He can’t think about Buddy, not too hard at least. He thinks of her as an idea, not the coldness in her voice, her blood, her distance from him. She’s just a little warm thing, like she was when she was a baby, something to hold against his chest and shush when he can feel her stir, something to fill up the spots that would normally be filled with Joy or the desire to kill himself.

“Hey,” Terry says, taking a seat beside him.

“What’re you doing? Go to sleep,” Brad says.

“I will soon,” he says, and that’s all he says. He sets his eyes on the same point in the distance as Brad, the same heavy contemplation in his neck and shoulders. Brad wants to touch him, but he doesn’t.

“What’re you going to do after this?” Terry asks. The question creeps up on Brad like a hand around his throat, squeezes softly. He swallows through it.

“We’ll have to find somewhere new. Somewhere they can’t find us.” A pause, another squeeze. “We might have to leave Olathe.”

“Oh,” Terry says.

“It’ll be easy to hide, probably. The guys are all gone, so it’ll just be us.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Brad doesn’t look at him. It takes a moment for the full weight of his words to translate and connect. They pang like guilt in his chest.

“Yeah,” he says at last. Something ghosts over Terry’s eyes, and Brad doesn’t know if it’s relief. Brad swallows. “We could find somewhere to live. We could build a little house.” Terry puts his head on Brad’s shoulder. He feels heavy, warm like summer rain.

“That’d be nice,” Terry says. Then, “We could plant a garden. Maybe Buddy would like that.”

“Yeah. I think she would.”

Brad can feel the sinking feeling in both of their chests as they gaze out onto the water, the only light at their backs. His hands are trembling, and his skull is pounding, and there’s something primal and afraid in his heart like an animal with its leg caught in a trap. That he’s not getting out, and, even if he does, it’s not going to heal right. And he can feel that Terry knows, that he’s desperately trying to unknow. Brad doesn’t know what to do. Brad wishes he had met Terry in some other life. But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything at all.

 

When Brad leaves that night, he can’t look at Terry, his gentle sleeping features, the curl of his fingers.

“You sure?” Tardy asks.

“Yeah,” Brad says. His heart is awful and desperate, like when he was a boy and would pray for God to save him, to save him and his sister, to send an angel or to give his father a heart attack or to turn them into water that would evaporate into clouds and be carried far away. He doesn’t know if he can believe in God anymore, but he needs something to save Terry in all the ways he cannot, to spare him the disaster that is Brad’s own fault. Brad doesn’t pray but silently begs for himself to be dashed against rock, even the good wood of his memory splintered and gone, and for Terry to be fine. Brad doesn’t say this as the boat drifts from the shore, knows that he couldn’t even if he had the chance. He doesn’t have words for this. The only love he knows is mercy.

**Author's Note:**

> new asphodel chapter out soon! until then, be my friend over on twitter @rasputinian.


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